Volume 13 | Issue 17 | Number 3 | Apr 27, 2015 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Making More Enemies than We Kill? Calculating U.S. Bomb Tonnages Dropped on Laos and Cambodia, and Weighing Their Implications 我々は殺すよりも多くの敵を産み出してきたのだろうか ラオス、カンボジアに投下された爆弾のトン数とその意味を考える Ben Kiernan, Taylor Owen Debate over the nature and impact of civilian secret sows anti-Americanism that jihadists use casualties from U.S. aerial attacks continues. “Are as a recruiting tool.”5 As discussion continued we creating more terrorists than we’re killing?,” over “How Drones Create More Terrorists,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once asked Hassan Abbas remarked that in targeted areas, of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The rise of Al Qaeda “Public outrage against drone strikes circuitously in Iraq and of its offshoot ISIS, suggests the empowers terrorists.”6 The humanitarian impact answer there.2 Reflecting in 2012 on U.S. drone and the political “blowback” can be serious -- strikes in Yemen, the former director of the CIA’s even from relatively restricted tactical air 1 Counter-Terrorism Center, Robert Greiner, campaigns. wrote: “One wonders how many Yemenis may What of sustained strategic carpet bombing? Is be moved in future to violent extremism in there any correlation between bomb tonnage and reaction to carelessly targeted missile strikes, and political blowback? During World War Two, how many Yemeni militants with strictly local United States aircraft dropped 1.6 million tons of agendas will become dedicated enemies of the bombs in the European theater and West in response to US military actions against approximately 500,000 tons in the Pacific theater. them.” 3 That same month a Yemeni lawyer warned: “DEAR OBAMA, when a U.S. drone Some 160,000 tons of bombs fell on Japan, nearly missile kills a child in Yemen, the father will go all of it in the final six months of the war. Much to war with you, guaranteed. Nothing to do with of it targeted civilian industrial areas, beginning Al Qaeda.” with the March 10, 1945 firebombing of Tokyo 4 and including the atomic bombs dropped that In 2013 David Rohde of Reuters reported that August on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Drone strikes do kill senior militants at times, Decisive victory proved more elusive in regional but using them excessively and keeping them 1 13 | 17 | 3 APJ | JF conflicts of the postwar era, even when the U.S. dropped over Laos at two million continued to deploy massive bomb tonnages. tonnes, making Laos the most During the Korean War of 1950-53, the U.S. heavily bombed nation on earth. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs and 32,000 tons This figure [ . . . has] become iconic of napalm, mostly on North Korea. And from in describing the destruction and 1961 to 1972, American aircraft dropped loss wrecked on Laos. However, this approximately one million tons of bombs on tonnage tally has only ever been an North Vietnam, and much more on rural areas of estimate . . . Currently emerging South Vietnam -- approximately 4 million tons of evidence suggests that the actual bombs, 400,000 tons of napalm, and 19 million figure may be more than two and a gallons of herbicides.8 half times this figure, some 5.7 7 million tonnes.11 On a per capita basis, Laos, with its much smaller and dispersed population, may have suffered a However, six years later in the Journal of yet higher rate of aerial bombardment during Vietnamese Studies(JVS), High revised back 1964-73 – “nearly a ton for every person in Laos,” downward that suggested “actual figure” of 5.7 according to the New York Times .9 The late Fred million tonnes of U.S. bombs dropped on Laos. Branfman, who learned Lao and worked with She now confirms “the conventional figure of refugees displaced in the country in 1967-69, was around two million tons.”.12 one of the first to publicize the human toll of that secret U.S. bombing, in his 1972 Voices from the During 2000-2010 various estimates, including Plain of Jars: Life under an Air War . Branfman’s ours, of the U.S. bombing tonnage dropped on book was reprinted in 2013, with a foreword by Cambodia from 1969 to 1973 followed a Alfred W. McCoy that terms the Laos campaign “history’s longest and largest air war.” trajectory similar to High’s up-down estimates 10 for Laos. And for similar reasons: the difficulties Meanwhile in 2008, anthropologist Holly High of technical analysis of the Pentagon’s enormous even suggested that the estimated tonnage of but antiquated Southeast Asia bombing U.S. bombs dropped on Laos during the Second databases. In 1989 one of us (Kiernan) had Indochina War needed dramatic upward published an article calculating a figure of revision: 539,000 tons dropped on Cambodia.13 But in 2000, just as High did for Laos eight years later, the The conventional history books Phnom Penh Postreported a new Cambodia total, usually place the total tonnage a dramatic upward revision: “The [data] tapes 2 13 | 17 | 3 APJ | JF show that 43,415 bombing raids were made on of the original SEADAB and CACTA files Cambodia dropping more than 2 million tons of [combined Pentagon databases entitled “Records bombs and other ordinance.”14 This figure had About Air Sorties Flown in Southeast Asia,” and significant implications for the continuing work “Combat Air Activities”], sorted country by to clear the Cambodian countryside of the still country so that each nation received only “its” widespread, deadly unexploded ordnance records. The original database is much larger: (UXO), as well as for a historical understanding indeed it is simply massive. It is also deeply of the wartime humanitarian and political impact flawed (some of the data appears to have been of the US carpet bombings. corrupted and there are omissions in certain months).” Our 2006 article, “Bombs over Cambodia,” using the same database and analysis, calculated a Kiernan wrote back to High on January 18, 2010 figure of 2.7 million tons dropped on Cambodia stating that “we would urgently like to in 1965-75. Our estimate, published in the incorporate corrections of mistakes that were Canadian magazine The Walrus, and in 2007 in based on faulty Pentagon data, and show where The Asia-Pacific Journal , was widely quoted. that data is inaccurate. If it is okay with you, we 15 16 would of course like to credit you and your But in 2010 we corrected that estimate, here in skilled research assistant at Sydney Uni’s Faculty The Asia-Pacific Journal . We revised it back down of Information Technology, who has worked on to around 500,000 tons. 17 In doing so we took this with you, for bringing the database errors to account of the mistaken technical analysis that our attention. Obviously the sooner we correct had impacted bombing tonnage estimates for those the better.” In an email of March 1, 2010, both Laos and Cambodia. Holly High had High asserted that in the Pentagon’s SEADAB written to Kiernan on January 4, 2010: “I have database, the original entries for each sortie been working with computer scientists here at under the field of bombing “Load Weight” had Sydney and we have managed to make a fairly been incorrectly keyed in, with a zero mistakenly responsive database and also account for the added to each figure. Those bombing tonnages anomalies in the data . . . The database covers all thus had to be divided by ten. of Southeast Asia, and contains many more fields than the data that you were working with, from In June 2010, therefore, we published our what I can tell from the data on the Cambodian downward correction of our 2006 estimate of 2.7 Genocide Project website. It looks like the data million tons. We stated that “this tonnage data you and others in the UXO business were may be incorrect. In new work using the original provided with was a simplified, distilled version Air Force SEADAB and CACTA databases, Holly 3 13 | 17 | 3 APJ | JF High and others have re-analyzed the total Cambodia was the victim of 2.7 million tons of Cambodia tonnage figures and argue in a ordnance, rather than 0.5 million, is becoming the forthcoming article that the total tonnage “new normal” in Cambodian studies. This dropped on Cambodia was at least 472,313 tons, upward revision has serious implications for the or somewhat higher.” We concluded: “It remains reading of regional, military and global undisputed that in 1969-73 alone, around 500,000 history.”20 tons of U.S. bombs fell on Cambodia.”18 We of course find that statement surprising, given that in 2010 we actually wrote the opposite, as High knows. Not only from Kiernan’s prior emails to her, but her note 26 specifically cites our “note 38” where, among other places in our 2010 publication, we advocated the figure of 500,000 tons. High’s own 2008 exaggeration of the Laos bombing, at 5.7 million tonnes, was entirely understandable, but she has corrected that only in 2014. Angkor-era Khmer temple at Phnom Chisor, Takeo province, Cambodia. Photo: Ben Kiernan, 1988. The most important outstanding issue concerns public access to the different databases we all have been working on. For some years we have Now, in their JVS article published in 2014, High made our Cambodia bombing data files and two co-authors cite precisely that paragraph accessible through the Cambodian Genocide of ours. 19 But they neither quote from it nor Program reveal to readers the fact that in it – in 2010 – we at Yale University (http://gsp.yale.edu).21 On January 4, 2010, High had publicly revised our estimate back had written to Kiernan: “I would be happy to downward, and acknowledged their assistance in help you access the database that we have doing so. Instead, in 2014, incomprehensibly, created . . . Let me know if you would like to they create the exact opposite impression: “Owen access this any time.” Kiernan thanked her for and Kiernan’s revised figure [sic] is nearly five that offer and posed several questions about the times higher than conventional estimates … data. On January 28, she wrote again: “I think the Owen and Kiernan’s reassessment of the air war best course of action is for James, Gareth and I to over Cambodia has also been uncritically cited by continue to finalize our piece of writing, and then a number of other scholars… The idea that share it with you when it is in a near final state 4 13 | 17 | 3 APJ | JF (close to final draft).” Kiernan did not hear from bombing data, and ultimately over the—by all High again, but on February 19, 2010, she kindly accounts—massive bombardment of Cambodia. sent Owen a draft of “what I have written for Our work and that of High and her co-authors on Cambodia so far (work in progress!).” It included this topic are based on data originally collected none of the assertions about us published in 2014, by the US government. The databases are huge, quoted above. Despite further requests, neither of they represent what was at the time an us heard any more from High after June, 2010 – unprecedented data collection effort, and they until March 2015, when the co-authored article contain significant ambiguity concerning the published in JVS in 2014 first came to our collection methodology and the precise nature of attention. the data fields. In order for these data to be In an email to Kiernan on January 7, 2010, High analyzed, they had to be converted to modern wrote that “the database is wildly inaccurate database formats. In the version we and the itself, if only because it was based on all-too- Phnom Penh Postobtained for Cambodia, this had human data entry and was also subjected to already been done. High and her colleagues, on falsification, as Shawcross notes [in his 1979 book the other hand, used the original archived data, Sideshow]. So I think the database probably and, working with computer scientists, underestimates the scale of the bombing, but the conducted the data cleaning and conversion database itself can’t tell us by how much or how themselves. The version of the database that they to account for this.” We suggest that High and built appears to be similar, but not identical, to her co-authors now make publicly accessible the the one we used for our analysis. database that is the subject of their 2014 JVS The insights that High and her co-authors drew publication, as we did for our 2006 and 2010 from this process and shared with us in email articles. exchanges provided a substantial contribution to In addition, in the interest of the full our understanding. Of particular relevance to our transparency of a process that is complex but analysis, they found errors in what we read to be historically important, the public record would the total tonnage field in the Cambodia database. also benefit from a more detailed accounting of High detailed their analysis to us via email, and how High and her colleagues processed the based on this we revised our tonnage figure original data files they obtained. In what follows, downward. For example, on March 1, 2010, in we outline some of our exchanges with High response to our question about how they had because they document the research exercise at derived their tonnage figures, High explained the core of the debate over the use of archived their procedures for each of the two Pentagon 5 13 | 17 | 3 APJ | JF databases in turn. multiplied by ten. So we had to divide by ten to get the realfigure. The figures produced have matched beautifully with other published figures, such as thetonnage reported for Linebacker II [the 1972 “Christmas bombing” of North Vietnam].” This is a valuable insight into the nature of the database and the thoughtful analysis that High, Curran and Robinson have conducted. But it is simply a window into the process. We do not Local farmers at Phnom Chisor in 1988 pointed out what they said was 1973 U.S. bomb damage to the historic site's modern Buddhist wat, still unrepaired in 1988. Photo: Ben Kiernan, 1988. have access to the details of the process that they used to build their database, nor to the complete database on which they have made these final calculations. Without further information we do First, the CACTA database, High wrote, not know, for instance, why a zero erroneously “contains the field ‘LoadQuantity’ which is added to each bombing load weight could have composed of [three parts, namely] load produced an approximately fivefold tonnage delivered, jettisoned and returned. We made a over-estimate (from c. 0.5 to 2.7 million tons), sum ofjettisoned and returned[,] to calculate how rather than a tenfold error. But we do have here a many bombs were dropped. It also has a field glimpse into some of the process of the data labelled‘Load Weight’. This lists the weight of analysis that it would be valuable to have fully each bomb, not the total of the load. It also has a entered into the public record. This would allow field'number of aircraft'. We determined that the us to compare the database they built with the load quantity referred to the total of all the one we used for our analysis, which to the best of aircraft, noteach one.” our knowledge are similar in structure. To get this important historical analysis right, we ask “For SEADAB,” she went on, “the sum is High and her colleagues to release their database different. Its ‘Load weight' column represents the and more fully explain the process by which they total of all bombs fornumber of aircraft, so in created it from the Pentagon’s original files. effect the sum was already done for us. The only hitch was that allfigures ended in zero!!! A very unlikely scenario. We did some checking and deduced thatsomehow, the entire field had been 6 13 | 17 | 3 APJ | JF But neither can Nixon or Kissinger escape judgement for their role in the slaughter that was a prelude to the genocide.” (1989) 22 “The still-incomplete [Pentagon] database (it has several “dark” periods) reveals that . . . over 10 per cent of this bombing was In 1988, farmers at Phnom Chisor pointed to an unexploded U.S. bomb still lying where it had fallen in 1973. Photo: Ben Kiernan, 1988. indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having “unknown” targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all …The The complexity of this technical discussion Cambodian bombing campaign had should not obscure the fact that, whatever the two unintended side effects that precise U.S. bombing tonnage dropped on ultimately combined to produce the Cambodia, it was massive. And as we have very domino effect that the Vietnam documented in three studies, much of it fell War was supposed to prevent. First, indiscriminately on populated rural areas. The the bombing forced the Vietnamese bombardment’s humanitarian and political Communists deeper and deeper into effects are clear. We stand by the conclusions we Cambodia, bringing them into have published on these issues over many years greater contact with Khmer Rouge of research: insurgents. Second, the bombs drove ordinary Cambodians into the “The evidence of survivors from arms of the Khmer Rouge, a group many parts of [Cambodia] suggests that seemed initially to have slim that at least tens of thousands, prospects of revolutionary success.” probably in the range of 50,000 to (2006)23 150,000 deaths, resulted from the US bombing campaigns . . . The Pol Pot “Cambodia became in 1969-73 one leadership of the Khmer Rouge can of the most heavily-bombarded in no way be exonerated from countries in history (along with responsibility for committing North Korea, South Vietnam, and genocide against their own people. Laos).Then, in 1975-79, it suffered 7 13 | 17 | 3 APJ | JF genocide at the hands of Pol Pot’s hundred’ Qaeda members in that country; by Khmer Rouge communists, who had 2012, the group had ‘a few thousand been military targets of the U.S. members’.” 2 6 bombing but also became its Dropping vast tonnages of bombs has to be political beneficiaries.” (2010) 24 destructive, and carpet bombing can inflict comprehensive damage. But understanding the human toll requires study of the impact on people on the ground and, as Fred Branfman did in Laos over 45 years ago, listening to their voices. And understanding the political consequences requires taking account of their responses. Recruiters propagandizing among bombing victims have adopted varied political strategies, including genocide in the case of the Khmer Rouge, Al Qaeda, and ISIS. The question Unknown US Bombing Targets, Cambodia whether the United States “creates more terrorists than it kills” has not gone away.27 During the four years of United States B-52 bombardment of Cambodia from 1969 to 1973, Ben Kiernan is the author of How Pol Pot Came to the Khmer Rouge forces grew from possibly one Power thousand guerrillas to over 200,000 troops and (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300102623/?tag militia. =theasipacjo0b-20), The Pol Pot Regime (1996) 25 (1985) (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300144342/?tag Writing about Yemen in 2013, Albert Hunt =theasipacjo0b-20), Blood and Soil: A World reported in the New York Timeson a smaller-scale History of Genocide and Extermination from recurrence of such expansion: “There is much Sparta evidence . . . that the drone strikes are creating to Darfur (2007) (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300144253/?tag more terrorists. In a report this year for the =theasipacjo0b-20), and Genocide and Resistance Council on Foreign Relations, the national in security scholar Micah Zenko said that in Yemen, Southeast Asia (2008) (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1412806690/?tag the Pentagon had conducted dozens of drone =theasipacjo0b-20). He is Whitney Griswold strikes, killing more than 700 people. In 2009, the Professor of History and Chair of the Council on Obama administration said there were ‘several Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University. 8 13 | 17 | 3 APJ | JF Taylor Owen is the author of Disruptive Power: The of Crisis of the State in the Digital Age (2015) (http://apjjf.org/-Bret-Fisk/3469/article.html) : (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0199363862/?tag Introduction Tokyo and Its Legacy =theasipacjo0b-20). He is Assistant Professor of (http://apjjf.org/-Bret-Fisk/3469/article.html) Digital Media and Global Affairs at the University of •Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan, Bombs Over British Columbia. Cambodia: New Light on US Air War Recommended citation: Ben Kiernan and Taylor (http://apjjf.org/-Ben-Kiernan/2420/article.htm Owen, "Making More Enemies than We Kill? l) Calculating U.S. Bomb Tonnages Dropped on Laos and Cambodia, and Weighing Their Implications", The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 17, No. 3, April 27, 2015. Notes 1 Related articles More (http://apjjf.org/admin/site_manage/details/, • Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen, Roots of U.S. www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/us/letter-killing Troubles in Afghanistan: Civilian Bombing -terrorists-creating-more.html),” New York Times , Casualties and the Cambodian Precedent April 16, 2013(accessed April 25, 2015). (http://apjjf.org/-Ben-Kiernan/3380/article.htm l) 2 The New York Timesreports that by 2007, Al Qaeda “had taken control of several major cities • Sahr Conway-Lanz, The Ethics of Bombing and provinces” in Iraq. Michael S. Schmidt and Civilians After World War II: The Persistence of Matt Apuzzo, “Petraeus Reaches Plea Deal…,” Norms Against Targeting Civilians in the Korean March 4, 2015, p. A15. War (http://apjjf.org/-Sahr-Conway_Lanz/4180/arti 3 cle.html) Robert Greiner, “Yemen and the US: Down a Familiar 012/05/201251071458557719.html),” Al-Jazeera, citizen responses to the US firebombing and bombing of Path (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2 • Mark Selden, Bombs Bursting in Air: State and Atomic Albert R. Hunt, “Killing Terrorists, Creating May 10, 2012, (accessed April 25, 2015) Japan (http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/4065/article.htm 4 l) Ibrahim Monthana, “How Drones Help Al Qaeda (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/opinion •Bret Fisk and Cary Karacas, The Firebombing 9 13 | 17 | 3 APJ | JF /how-drones-help-al-qaeda.html),” New York w w w . w h p - j o u r n a l s . c o . u k / G E / h i g h . p d f Times, June 13, 2012, (accessed April 25, 2015) 5 (http://www.whp-journals.co.uk/GE/high.pdf). High cites her source in note 35: “John Dingley, David Rohde, “Obama’s Overdue Step on Drones Senior Technical Advisor at UXO Lao, personal (ttp://blogs.reuters.com/david- communication. This figure is based on US Air rohde/2013/05/24/obamas-overdue-step-on- Force data provided to UXO Lao. Unfortunately, drones/),” Reuters, May 24, 2013, (accessed April the data has many errors, and exact figures are 25, 2015) 6 Hassan still unclear.” Abbas, Atlantic Holly High, James R. Curran and Gareth (http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/20 Robinson, “Electronic Records of the Air War 13/08/how-drones-create-more-terrorists/278743/) , Over Southeast Asia: A Database Analysis,” August 23, 2013, (accessed April 25, 2015) Journal of Vietnamese Studies , 8:4 (Fall 2013), pp. 7 12 86-124, at 104, 110. This article first appeared in Bruce Cumings, The Korean War , New York, 2014 Modern Library, 2010. 8 here (http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/vs.2014.8. James P. Harrison, “History’s Heaviest 4.86): note 26 cites a URL “accessed November Bombing,” in The Vietnam War: Vietnamese and 2013.” American Perspectives , ed. Jayne S. Werner and 13 Luu Doan Huynh, Armonk, NY, M.E. Sharpe, Kampuchea, 1993, 131-32. 9 William Yardley, “Fred Branfman, Who American_Bombardment_of_Kampuchea.pdf)” Vietnam Generation , 1:1, Winter 1989, pp. 4-41, (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/us/fred Table 1, p. 6: -branfman-laos-activist-dies-at-72.html)” New York Times, Oct. 6, 2014:(accessed April 25, 2015) Fred Branfman, Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life under an Air War, Madison, University of 14 Phnom Penh Post , April 14, 2000. 15 Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan, “Bombs over Cambodia (http://www.yale.edu/cgp/Walrus_CambodiaB Wisconsin Press, 2013, xiii. 11 1969-1973, (http://www.yale.edu/cgp/Kiernan,1989-The_ Exposed Bombing of Laos, Dies at 72, 10 Ben Kiernan, “The US Bombardment of ombing_OCT06.pdf),” Walrus magazine, October Holly High, “Violent Landscape: Global Explosions and Lao Life-Worlds,” Global Environment 1:1, 2008, 56-79, at 67, 10 2006, 62-69, 16 Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan, “Bombs Over 13 | 17 | 3 APJ | JF Kiernan, “US Bombardment, Cambodia 22 (http://apjjf.org/-Ben-Kiernan/2420/article.htm (http://www.yale.edu/cgp/Kiernan,1989-The_ l),”Asia-Pacific Journal , May 12, 2007: American_Bombardment_of_Kampuchea.pdf)” 3 17 2, 36. Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen, “Roots of U.S. Troubles in Afghanistan: Civilian Bombing 23 Casualties and the Cambodian Precedent (http://www.yale.edu/cgp/Walrus_CambodiaB (http://www.japanfocus.org/-Ben-Kiernan/338 ombing_OCT06.pdf,) 62-3. 0),” The Asia-Pacific Journal , 26-4-10, June 28, 2010, 24 box inset, and note 38: Afghanistan,” 18 0) Afghanistan: Civilian Bombing Casualties and Cambodian Kiernan and Owen, “Roots of U.S. Troubles in (http://www.japanfocus.org/-Ben-Kiernan/338 Kiernan and Owen, “Roots of U.S. Troubles in the Owen and Kiernan, “Bombs over Cambodia,” Precedent 25 Kiernan, “US Bombardment of Kampuchea, (http://www.japanfocus.org/-Ben-Kiernan/338 (http://www.yale.edu/cgp/Kiernan,1989-The_ 0),” Asia-Pacific Journal , June 28, 2010, note 38. American_Bombardment_of_Kampuchea.pdf)” 19 6. High et al., “Electronic Records of the Air War,” note 26. 20 High et al., “Electronic Records of the Air Hunt, “Killing Terrorists, Creating More.” 27 “Jimmy Carter: Drones Create More Terrorists, (http:// War,” 92. 21 26 www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/25/jimmy-c The CGP geographic data may be downloaded arter-drones_n_5028275.html)” Huffington Post , here March 25, 2014, (accessed April 25, 2015). (http://maps.library.yale.edu/images/public/C GP/) . 11
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